A world where evil and killing are virtues while sanity and goodness are punished by death. Samuel Beckett had just lived through that in France , when he wrote Waiting for Godot in 1949 (actually in French as While Waiting for Godot). And now, the new dawn after the war was not so great after all. Stalin was wearing the same cloth as Hitler, just giving it a different name, China was in a civil war and Europe was flattened economically.
Godot reflects this bleakness. The two tramps are symbols of all of mankind – waiting for a better future but with little hope, only ourselves to rely on, keeping our spirits up and trying to figure out what life is all about. And they are tramps because, regardless of riches, all mankind is stripped down to the same essentials in tackling life and thereafter.
One of the toughest plays in the world to stage successfully, because there is no beginning, no plot and no ending, Godot requires a confident director and accomplished actors. (High schools and colleges should avoid it, because the actors have hardly started on life’s road and have little instinct of what Beckett is talking about).
Marin Theatre Company has certainly achieved that, with virtually faultless performances from all four characters and director Jasson Minadakis knowing what he wants. Mark Anderson Phillips and Mark Bedard are at the top of their game, getting every step and utterance just so.
The question is whether it’s the right achievement. British productions I have seen often veer too much to the maudlin and bleak, producing a plodding, dull result.
Marin Theatre Company does just the opposite. The pace zips along, overcoming leaden patches in the dialogue.
The trouble is that comedy crowds out the somber, right from Estragon in the opening scene trying to pull off his boot. There are so many ways of interpreting this, from pathetic through desperate and all the way up the scale, that it acts as a signal of what the director is aiming for. Minadakis lets us know without any doubt. Certainly there are some delightful passages in Godot but this production overshadows, and sometimes smothers, the grim phases of life that Beckett highlighted.
At one point it seemed as if Bedard overplayed the comedy or was hinting that there is too much emphasis on humor. His one utterance of “We are waiting for Godot” was delivered in the style of a stand-up night club routine on Comedy Central.
Minadakis stays exact to Beckett’s balance of grim, bleak and funny only in the appearance in the First Act of James Carpenter as Pozzo and Ben Johnson as Lucky. Pozzo embodies the materially successful side that humans can aspire to, crushing everyone beneath him. Carpenter excels at that, eliciting a twinge of malice from the audience, who want him to be brought low.
Johnson deservedly earned applause for the nonsensical monologue, which I’ve always thought that Beckett overdid (just what is the point of uttering obscure British place names?), that sums up the constant mental anguish clogging our brains.
For audiences seeing Godot for the first time, this is a fun way to do it. But the deeper, hidden themes are elusive.
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Martin Rushmere is a journalist and writer in Sausalito, California. He can be reached at martinzim@earthlink.net
Welcome, readers, to the February 2013 issue of Synchronized Chaos! This month, our contributors are going to take you on a journey into the past: we’re presenting a number of pieces which examine bygone days—ranging from personal histories to ancient events to recent incidents to past artistic genres—and tell us something about their connection to modern times. Let’s examine what our authors and artists have to say on the topic…
Poet Shelby Stephenson opens the issue with a pair of eye-catching excerpts from two longer works. Each one takes the events of the past and makes them resonate in a modern context: “Country” draws upon the popular culture of the 1950s and ‘60s and the giants of the country music genre, while “Nin’s Poem: A Bipolar Memoir” takes a more personal turn, drawing on memories of love, education, and historical milestones to weave together a compelling tale.
Personal reminisces are also the subject of Cristina Deptula’s poems in this issue. Cristina, a longtime editor for Synchronized Chaos, contributes “Gordon’s Airplane” (inspired by a family friend who was a private pilot), “Harmony with Nature” (a humorous look at the dichotomy between modern technology and the natural world), and “Wise Construction” (a soul-searching look back at the flaws of past actions).
Regular poetic contributors Linda Allen and Sam Burks both contribute a variety of excellent pieces this month. “David and Goliath,” one of four poems by Linda in this issue, looks back to a traumatic childhood event to tell a story of religious faith and survival in a life-threatening situation. Meanwhile, several of Sam’s poems address the past and its connection to the present: “Your Body Is the Missing Season” describes a past relationship in evocative terms, “The 29th” deals with the passage of time, and “Tomorrow” examines both the present and the future through the lens of the past.
Other exceptional poems come from Teri Louise Kelly, whose “Spore Suite” deals vividly with the brutal consequences of love, life, and relationships past and present, and Tatjana Debeljacki, who contributes four pieces, several of which focus on the pain of the here and now but look towards a more hopeful future.
With his essay “Pilgrimage to Wounded Knee,” Jeff Rasley moves us into a different type of history: incidents which occurred long ago but nevertheless retain all their relevance today. In his piece, Jeff discusses his family’s connection to one of the most shameful events of America’s past and describes how a recent trip to South Dakota helped illuminate some of its modern-day repercussions.
Janine Canan’s poem “Crucifixion of a Woman” deals with an event in the more recent past, but one which is no less significant or problematic. It’s just the first of a set of six “Poems from India” by Janine which range from real-world events to evocation of memories to pieces of abstract beauty.
This issue also includes reviews of three recently-published books. Each one is well worth a read, and each has a significant connection to the past. In Brant Waldeck’s children’s novel The Secret of the Portals, covered here by Bruce Roberts, the link is a stylistic one: the book hearkens back to the epics and swashbuckling adventures of bygone days. Bruce also reviewsWindham’s Rembrandt, Jonathan R. Humphries’ depiction of his father’s experiences as an art teacher in the Texas prison system, and ponders upon some illuminating connections to his own past. Meanwhile, Elaine Starkman’s poetry collection Hearing Beyond Sound engages with the past in yet another way: as reviewer Deborah Fruchey explains, it is specifically designed to evoke the memories of old age, and it is filled with references to historical events both personal and political.
Speaking of the world of writing, this month’s installment of Leena Prasad’s column Whose Brain Is It deals with an effect which good stories have had on their readers since the distant past, and which they’ll continue to have as long as they exist. “World of Words” describes the brain’s ability to create vivid mental pictures of the action occurring in stories, and we predict that this experience will be a familiar one to our readers!
In his essay “The Climate War,” Randle Aubrey takes a look at the destructive tactics used by Exxon, Shell, and other major fossil-fuel-dependent corporations. Addressing both the past (the history of questionable practices employed by these companies) and the future (the methods needed to combat them), he makes a compelling case for social reform. A further take on the climate change comes from Dr. John J. Berger, interviewed in this issue by Cristina Deptula; comparing present weather conditions to those of the past, Dr. Berger paints a disturbing picture, but he also creates hope for the future in the arena of renewable energy.
The technology of a much more distant past is referenced in the piece at the top of this post: it’s titled “Aqueduct” after one of the most revolutionary inventions of the ancient world. It, as well as five other superbly-crafted abstract pieces by artist Mark Yearwood, can be found here.
We hope you enjoy this month’s issue of Synchronized Chaos! As always, please feel free to leave comments for the contributors; if you’re interested in submitting some of your own work for the magazine, please send it over to synchchaos@gmail.com.
An Interview About Climate Change, Climate Activism,
Renewable Energy, and Personal Responsibility with
Energy and Natural Resources Author John J. Berger
Q. How is Climate Myths (and the rest of the series) different from other climate-related books? What does it add to the debate?
A. Climate Myths: The Campaign Against Climate Science is intended as a concise and easily understood popular book on climate change that you could give to that cantankerous old uncle of yours who believes climate change is some kind of a hoax dreamed up by leftwing environmental fanatics.
Climate Myths is unique in both exploring the massive disinformation campaign that’s been mounted by the fossil fuel industry on climate change, and then simultaneously coupling that investigation with rebuttals of popular fossil fuel industry-sponsored myths and misconceptions about climate change.
The book thus helps account for the fact that although the human role in disturbing the climate has been well known for decades and the role of greenhouse gases has been known for more than a century, U.S. climate policy and, by extension, global climate policy has been significantly stalemated for the past 20 years by opposition from people and institutions supported by the fossil fuel industry. Climate Myths exposes this below-the-radar universe of powerful industry interest groups that has been so influential in molding public opinion on climate change, and with our legislators.
The operation of these well paid, skillful and predominantly right-wing groups is largely responsible for the fact that many people, including policy makers, have for years now been deeply misguided on climate and energy issues. Thus, they are now suddenly shocked by the arrival of the extreme weather that that climate scientists have been predicting and warning of for decades.
Q. How did you do the research for Climate Myths? Whom did you talk with, where did you look, etc?
A. I’ve studied and written about energy and environmental issues for decades so I didn’t base this book on casual journalistic interviews. I read thousands of pages of scientific reports and journals by climate scientists and attended scientific meetings. I spoke or corresponded with a few scientists when I needed a better understanding of their research or technical questions. I reviewed government studies from NASA, NOAA, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I also read nontechnical books by scientists like Joe Romm, James Hansen, Mark Bowen, and Tim Flannery and by serious outstanding journalists like Mark Lynas and Fred Pearce. Mark Lynas’ book Six Degrees, in particular, is extraordinarily useful.
Q. I know this is part of a series, and that you’re going to get into climate systems and solutions in the next two books. Do you have any big ideas or thoughts you’d like to give us as a preview?
A. The book that I’m finishing now is called Climate Peril: The Intelligent Reader’s Guide to Understanding the Climate Crisis. Climate Peril shows how grave the climate crisis is—the tremendous price that we’ve already paid and are going to pay in terms of human and environmental health and socioeconomic well being, and how pervasive the increasingly adverse climate impacts are across many different ecosystems and natural resources.
The present is already deeply alarming: the oceans are rising at an accelerating rate and acidifying; ice is melting in Greenland and the rest of the Arctic and in Antarctica. Extreme weather and fires are on the upsurge. The Amazon and other tropical rain forests are beginning to dry out. Frozen permafrost holding 1.9 trillion tons of carbon is beginning to melt in the Arctic. Millions of people have already been sickened or died from the effects of the rapid climate change we’ve had so far. But the future is even more menacing. If current emissions trends continue, we are heading straight toward temperatures in 2100 that haven’t been seen on this planet in 5 million years. We cannot allow Earth’s temperature to rise to levels that only prevailed long before humans even existed.
Even the so-called safe temperature increase of 2° C would be hotter than at any time in the past 800,000 years. That conceivably could drive the Earth’s climate past various tipping points that could trigger irreversible climate feedbacks. We don’t yet know enough about the exact temperatures at which these triggers will fire and deliver uncontrollable additional warming.
Absent that knowledge, we are currently conducting a totally unprecedented and reckless experiment with the Earth’s climate. Climate Peril shows what we’ve already done to the Earth and makes clear that we are heading rapidly towards a climate catastrophe. One of the most important take-aways from the book is that the 2° C safe warming threshold we often hear about is really not an absolute guarantee of safety, and that we really don’t have much time left to change course in energy and environmental policy, given how vast the changes required of us are.
In the book that follows Climate Peril, a book titled Climate Solutions, I outline the policies that I believe are necessary to address the climate problem as effectively as possible by weaving together energy and transportation with agricultural and forestry programs that, taken together, will arrest the growth of emissions and begin to reduce the burden of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The primary goal of the book is to show how we can combine protection of the climate with economic policies that bring full employment and a just, sustainable economy.
Q. As a science journalist myself, I’d like to know what would you say about the role of science writing and journalism in the movement to restore and protect the Earth. What can writers do that adds to the work of the ecologists and other scientists?
A. I believe that science writers, like translators, are vital to communicating complicated ideas of science into language the public can understand. This creates a larger bloc of people who really understand climate issues and the choices that have to made about them. Science writers understand the methods and language of science and ideally are able to convey it more simply and clearly in ways that are more interesting to people without specialized backgrounds.
One way they do this is to humanize the issue by writing stories in which scientists are protagonists portrayed as characters overcoming obstacles in a saga of discovery. Science writers also sometimes focus on the human implications of research, for example the child cured of asthma by a new medicine or a wetland restored by the ecologist or hydrologist who understands how nature operates and therefore can write a prescription for repairing it.
In that sense, science writers can highlight good work that can then serve as a model for others to follow. The science journalist can also synthesize and correlate important field observations and bring new scientific and investigative findings to light, as Rachel Carson did with the harmful effects of DDT. Cynics would have us believe that bringing truth to light and expecting change is naïve, but dispelling lies and inaccurate information was essential for controlling pesticides and tobacco and thereby protecting public health. It is equally or more important for science writers to dispel the lies and misinformation that are now so current about climate change so that public officials and leaders have accurate information on which to base climate policy. The information itself is not sufficient to bring sound policies—hard political organizing is necessary—but honest information is a necessary prerequisite.
Q. Who is the main target audience and what is the main goal of Climate Myths? Is your primary goal to convince those skeptical about climate change, or to educate the general public, or to inspire activists to take even more pro-environmental action?
A. While I hope to reach the general public, I understand that most people are not buyers of books on climate change. So I think this book will appeal mostly to intellectually curious people; to college faculty and students, environmentalists, activists, renewable energy advocates and entrepreneurs as well as legislators and their aides. As I mentioned earlier, it would be a good “pass along” book for a friend or family member who is confused or skeptical about climate science.
Q. What would you say to those concerned about the scalability of renewable energy technologies to people who say it can help on a small scale but won’t replace oil or coal anytime soon given our standard of living in the West.
A. If you look at the magnitude of the renewable energy resources and their declining costs and versatility and increasing adoption rates along with the still-extensive opportunities for increased energy efficiency, you can’t help but see that renewables have the capacity to meet very large energy demands indeed. Our wind resources alone are far greater than our electrical demand. There are huge untapped solar resources in the southwestern deserts of the U.S. and northern Mexico and on rooftops throughout much of the nation. We also have important geothermal and biomass resources and new technology is emerging to harness wave energy. Hydroelectricity has been an important resource for generations. The main obstacle to the wider use of renewables is political rather than technological. I explain my views on renewables in some detail in previous books like, Charging Ahead: The Business of Renewable Energy and What It Means for America (University of California Press) and in Beating the Heat: How and Why We Must Combat Global Warming (Berkeley Hills Books) and in “Renewable Energy Sources as a Response to Climate Change” a chapter I wrote for Climate Change Policy (Island Press), a volume edited by the late Stephen H. Schneider and others.
Q. Why and how did you choose to emphasize restoration ecology as an approach to caring for the environment? What makes it especially important, alongside other strategies?
A. Restoration is a proactive way of addressing damage that’s already been done to the Earth. Conservation is critically important. But if we confine ourselves solely to conserving what’s left of Earth’s natural bounty, we will forever be forced to defend a steadily shrinking perimeter of relatively untouched, healthy resources. Nature is always under threat and has to be defended vigilantly. Without a proactive environmental restoration agenda, we’ll always be on the defensive in simply trying to protect the environment. Our goal should be to improve the environment, not merely to slow further losses. Moreover, restoration is often necessary to arrest environmental degradation, like soil erosion for example, and prevent further inexorable damage.
Overall, we’ve got a tremendous backlog of badly damaged natural resources on this planet in the form of severely disrupted mined land, clearcut forests, abused rangeland and prairie, toxic waste sites, and polluted rivers, lakes, streams, and estuaries. With ever-increasing global demands on natural resources, we need to return these injured resources back to healthy, productive condition wherever possible.
Q. What are some of the best ways ordinary people can get involved in helping our environment and transforming our energy systems? I know you’ve talked about that in Restoring the Earth (Knopf, Doubleday Dell). What would you say people and policymakers should do that would be practical and have an impact? By the way, we’re an international magazine and plenty of our readers are non-Western (India, Pakistan, Eastern Europe, parts of Africa, etc.) Would you have different thoughts and suggestions for them? I know the condition of the planet affects everyone!
A. As you noted, whole books have been written on these questions. The answers vary a great deal depending on the nature of the problem, location, and the conditions surrounding it. I’ll mention a few general principles first and then some more specific ideas.
First let me address the policy question. Many constructive steps can be taken. We need to phase out all public subsidies to the fossil fuel and nuclear industries and impose a carbon tax on fossil fuels. This will make fossil fuel use progressively less competitive and will provide revenue that can be used to build a renewable energy economy. The burning of fossil fuels is the main problem, and the use of nuclear power is not a cost-effective way of replacing them. We need to give producers of nonpolluting power generous long-term energy production tax credits to make clean energy even more profitable to producers and to help them in securing long-term financing. The use of coal power without carbon sequestration has to be phased out as quickly as possible and renewable energy R&D needs to be scaled up. The destruction of forests and wetlands needs to be stopped globally and policies need to be implemented in agriculture to reduce nitrous oxide and methane emissions.
In the U.S. we need a comprehensive national energy plan aimed at nothing less than a total transformation of our national energy system. It needs to include a steadily increasing national renewable energy requirement, the electrification of the transportation system, more and better energy storage technologies, and modernization of our electric transmission system and its reorientation to enable our remote renewable energy resources to provide their abundant power to major urban markets. Furthermore, it needs to be designed in the context of a domestic full employment and economic revitalization plan aimed at creating a sustainable and more equitable society, so that ordinary people will both benefit from, and vigorously support the plan. Calls for such a program initially have to come from below, from organized but ordinary working people.. Pressure will work its way gradually upward from this base to put powerful pressure on those in power at the top.
In terms of personal action, each person has different gifts and passions. We each need to do something that makes best use of our talents and determination not to stand by while the Earth and the climate are abused. I don’t live in Eastern Europe or in a developing nation in Asia or the Southern Hemisphere so I’m not sure I’m in a position to advise people in those societies.
These are some general thoughts mainly for the U.S., although some may apply elsewhere. Fundamentally, protecting the climate is a large and complex issue. Trying to work alone can be overwhelming, so work with others. Find organizations whose concerns you share and volunteer with them or support them in any way you can. On a personal level, we can all try to avoid wasting energy and resources, and we can be conscientious when we shop or invest so we support companies that are trying to behave in environmentally and socially responsible ways, for example by observing Fair Trade practices and using renewable energy. We can also read widely and educate ourselves about climate problems, share our knowledge with others, and become involved in the political process.
The least we can do is exercise our right to vote, a right people fought and died for. Yet almost half the American electorate doesn’t even bother to vote in presidential elections. Far fewer vote in off-year elections. Less than 56% of those eligible voted in the 2012 presidential context. People under 30 were even less engaged—about half of them didn’t vote. My suggestion is, don’t fail to vote! And during campaigns, support candidates who are working for climate protection, safe energy, economic justice, and truly representative democracy. When elections are over, demand meaningful action on climate change from your political representatives. Let these powerful people know what your concerns are and that you will absolutely not support them—and will discourage others from voting for them—if they fail to stand up for climate protection, the environment, and the public good. Don’t accept “no” for an answer. Recruit others to join you in political action and organizing. Support new candidates who understand the problems and what needs to be done. Use people power to create a groundswell of political pressure for change.
Change comes from the bottom up. We may not have the financial support of wealthy corporations or major donors, but millions of people do care about the Earth and the climate. We need to find and connect with them to build a politically powerful base for change. Don’t forget to also commend leaders when they do the right thing. They also very much need encouragement and support.
I believe there is still reason for hope, but that we are perilously close to irreversible climate change that will trigger uncontrollable global warming. We don’t know precisely how close we are—no one has a year and a date—but scientists at the prestigious Hadley Research in the UK have said that if we continue on our present course, it could happen as early as the middle of this century. That’s less than 40 years from now and probably within your lifetime.
In terms of the rapidly rising carbon content of the atmosphere and the rising global average temperature, we are clearly close to the point at which, for example, we finish melting the Arctic sea ice, destroy the Amazon rain forest, release more carbon from permafrost, and possibly oxidize the massive Indonesian peatlands, putting so much carbon into the air that the strength of the ensuing positive feedbacks overwhelms anything we could conceivably do to counteract these powerful natural forces. The hour is very late to begin making the dauntingly vast and pervasive changes in energy production and use, along with the far-reaching land use changes required to rapidly and definitively set global emissions on a downward trajectory. The work that needs to be done is so enormous in scope and scale that the prospect is absolutely sobering, but I believe it is still conceivable to accomplish.
On the daunting side, population is still growing toward 9 billion; global energy demand is climbing; global oil and gas exploration and development is booming—including production of highly polluting tar sands and oil shales and oil and gas drilling in fragile frontier locations. Trillions of dollars have been committed worldwide to the fossil fuel energy and transportation enterprise. The quicker we change over to clean energy systems, the more of that infrastructure will have to be retired before it wears out. The large corporations holding those assets will resist that with everything they’ve got and will mobilize their lobbyists and pull all the financial strings that large campaign contributors hold to control Congressional representatives. (It’s important to note, however, that some fossil fuel plants are old and have already been fully amortized. Their outputs can readily and economically be replaced without much controversy by renewable facilities and by greater investment in energy efficiency.)
Meanwhile, construction of the needed renewable energy facilities and new transportation technologies is not going to be a walk in the park. Expanding the electric grid involves jurisdictional issues and building new renewable energy facilities requires time-consuming environmental studies, permits, and battles over rights of way. Better and less costly energy storage facilities are needed to compensate for the intermittency of some renewable technologies. Better batteries are needed for electric vehicles. Then people will take time to adapt to new vehicles and modes of transport. Less expensive biofuels with fewer environmental impacts need to be mass produced. Forests, wetlands, and prairies that naturally sequester carbon in soils need to be protected, enhanced, and restored; global agricultural practices need to be improved to reduce their emissions. A lot needs to happen very, very quickly.
On the encouraging side, the nation and the world have the natural resources, the scientific knowledge, the collective economic might, and the energy technologies to deal with the extraordinary global crisis we face. When faced with epochal threats like Pearl Harbor and World War Two, the U.S. pulled together and rose to the occasion. Once political leaders really fully grasp that we are in the midst of a global emergency with everything ultimately at stake and no time to waste, then they will finally get that we must slash carbon emissions and create a worldwide renewable energy economy. From that point, the shift will begin to accelerate and—if climate change has not by that time begun to undermine our economy—the creation of the new energy economy will revitalize the global economy. Then as new jobs materialize and emissions fall, the process will inspire new hope for a sustainable future.
To accomplish this, our greatest challenge is develop the political will as a nation and as a family of nations to take the bold and far-reaching actions that are absolutely necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to protect the climate, human life, and the environment that sustains us.
We don’t have time any more to lament the situation or make excuses for inaction. Everyone can do something. We need all hands on deck. Be determined. Fight the good fight. Do something, no matter how insignificant you may think it is. Chances are you have more power and influence than you think. Millions of other people are out there who already silently agree with you. They will stand up if you do. Use your power. Amazing and tremendous things have been done and will be done by committed individuals.
The campaign in support of climate change reform recently took a dramatic turn with the latest attack ad on the fossil fuel industry from the grassroots organization The Other 98%. “Making a fortune destroying your kids’ future? At Exxon, that’s what we would call good business!” the ad proclaims, in one of the most searing indictments against the fossil fuel industry to date. Using satire to expose the colossal waste of taxpayer dollars used to prop up an industry with no regard for public welfare or personal liberty, the ad went viral almost immediately, having been perfectly timed for release at the height of 2012’s widely publicized “fiscal cliff” negotiations. Hundreds of thousands of views and considerable attention from progressive media outlets successfully managed to ruffle the feathers of Exxon’s higher-ups, compelling them to release the following statement: “Energy use and climate change are critically important challenges facing society that won’t be resolved with media campaigns that rely on provocative language and false allegations.”
It appears The Other 98% struck a nerve. Good.
As you might have figured out by now, speaking truth to power is considered rude. It’s not nice. “Manners are of more importance than laws,” wrote philosopher Edmund Burke, quoted by sycophantic conservative mouthpiece David Brooks in a recent New York Times article regarding President Obama’s sharper tone against House Republicans in recent months. Legitimately challenging the status quo has become something to be patronized by our mainstream media, a place where indignation is met with outrage and appeals to civility are the first defense against appeals to reason. Those who choose not to toe the line with the rest of the political paparazzi are chided as impertinent children or castigated as rebellious upstarts, and it would seem that what’s expected of liberals and progressives in “legitimate” political discourse is to say please, shut the fuck up, and wait until the grownups are done talking, on any subject from the “fiscal cliff” to what some are now referring to as the “climate cliff”.
The time for playing nice is over when it comes to climate change. It’s happening, whether we like it or not. In a recent feature in Rolling Stone called “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math”, leading environmental activist and founder of 350.org Bill McKibben states that the fossil fuel industry has “five times as much oil and coal and gas on the books as climate scientists think is safe to burn.” He goes on to state that we’d “have to keep 80 percent of those reserves locked away underground to avoid that fate,” and we’ve got ten years at best to get started shutting down this aberrant vision of “progress” before we begin to be subjected to the full weight of its folly. Simply put, time is running out.
But if you’re reading this, you probably already knew that. The question is: how do we get the world on board?
It’s become abundantly clear that appealing to people’s reason in the discussion about climate change is a lost cause. Companies like Exxon-Mobil, Shell, and BP have done a phenomenal job of sowing enough doubt regarding mankind’s influence on climate change that the subject has become a dead issue in American politics, causing a jaded public to collectively shrug their shoulders and assume it’ll sort itself out. The mainstream media’s not covering it whatsoever; it was almost completely off the table in the 2012 presidential elections. Even when the argument is occasionally rolled out for public display, those that speak on our behalf are derided and disregarded by so-called “climate skeptics”, snake-oil salesmen peddling bogus facts, figures, and empty promises designed to misguide an ambivalent public towards a path of inevitable destruction, both immediate and long-term. All this for the sake of lining the pockets of greedy shareholders so insulated from the consequences of their actions that they literally cannot and will not see not only the destruction they have wrought, but the impending doom that lies ahead for all mankind, including themselves. The tight-knit web of corruptive collusion between government officials, fossil fuel lobby groups, and mainstream media outlets has yanked the soapbox out from under the scientific community, and shoved them into the back of the bus. How’s that for “nice”? How’s that for “politeness”?
But widespread media suppression, corruption and pseudoscience are not the only problems with getting anything done in this arena. One of the biggest problems reformers face is that the issue of climate change itself is an abstraction. It’s not that interesting, because it’s not happening right in front of us at a rate that we can easily perceive. Given mankind’s relatively short attention span and inclination towards high drama over high-brow science, charts and graphs and mild-mannered scientists aren’t exactly “wowing” people. Most of those who have come forward to speak on civilization’s behalf seem either unwilling or unable to capitalize on this behavior, and find new and innovative ways to appeal to people’s outrage as well as their reason. Climate change advocacy needs fire and brimstone; it needs pulpit-pounding stump speeches. We need to make people understand that they have been betrayed by those who they have charged with stewardship over this planet’s resources. We need to start talking about who we’re fighting, not what.
The fossil fuel industry is a hive mind gone completely rogue, a bloated, cancerous growth upon our planet that places the welfare of its shareholders over that of life itself. Unmoored from governmental oversight through rampant corruption, fossil fuel companies and their ilk have tightened their web around the globe, breaking and bending laws with reckless abandon nearly every single day and bribing their way through the advancement of their exploitative agenda, leaving a path of environmental and economic ruin in their wake. They beg, borrow, and steal their way across our lands, into our communities, spewing black filth into our rivers, into our skies, into our soil. It fills our lungs and our bellies, and our bodies grow ripe with decay over every successive generation. And worst of all, they have learned to exploit almost every environmental tragedy, whether man made or not, as an economic opportunity. Not just in the fossil fuel business, but in every business, from education to banking to defense. They are all connected. Our institutions have failed to protect us; they are hamstrung by greed. We must stand up for ourselves and fight.
In the war for the future of mankind, climate change reformers are losing.
A war needs armies. A war needs generals. Most importantly, a war needs tactics; ruthless ones. We have to hit them where it hurts: their reputation, and the machine that supports it. So if we can’t win with the facts people won’t believe, then we have no choice but to fight with the ones they will. We have to tell a new story, one that attaches fossil fuel companies’ crimes against humanity to people’s core values. We need to talk about saving the world of today rather than the world of tomorrow, focusing on almost everything but the science in order to do this, using it only to support our righteous indignation towards willful ignorance and criminal neglect. We need to tell the truth: these people are criminals. They do not care about us. And they must be stopped.
The future is not the only thing at stake. Justice herself is in danger. She must no longer remain blind.